Volume 6 No 4 - Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies

9
The best measure of the tempo of the Operation,
the points at which objectives shifted, can be seen
in the following graph which shows the cumulative
usage of sea and air-launched Cruise missiles
and of other PGMs 58 .
The command and control, ISR, air refuelling and
air mobility missions were considered by the
CFACC to be the “cost of doing business” and
were not included in the daily apportionment calculations.
However, they have been shown this
way to emphasise the balance between combat
and combat support air operations. In Operation
IRAQI FREEDOM 66% of offensive sorties were
devoted to supporting the Land and Special Forces
Component Commanders, and whilst that figure
was 72% for Operation DESERT STORM, the
conflicts were very different with the latter having
a fairly short ground war in extensive precursor
interdiction campaign. What is not clear from the
above statistics, however, because both offensive
and defensive sorties were considered in the
counter air category, is what the breakdown
between them was. With only 56 single-role
fighters 55 the coalition could generate about 70
sorties per day, at the average sortie rate. When
compared with the average number of OCA
targets attacked per day this gives an approximate
OCA/DCA ratio of 1:1. However, once it became
apparent that there was no air threat swing-role
aircraft such as the F15E were placed in the on-call
‘stacks’ with both air-to-air and air-to-ground
weapons on board. These on-call missions were
designated as X-AI and X-CAS etc to differentiate
them from pre-planned ones 56 . Apart from the lack
of an air threat, the critical factor in keeping the
‘stacks’ manned was the availability of air
refuelling tankers 57 .
Cruise missile usage peaked on A Day, 21 March
2003, when over 500 were used against regime and
IADs targets in the Baghdad area. PGM usage
rates slowly crept up between 23 and 31 March to
1000 per day and then doubled to 2,000 per day as
attacks intensified on the Republican Guard divisions
defending Baghdad between 1-3 April. The
rate then dropped as the focus became airborne
CAS in the Baghdad area. The last summary of
cumulative weapon usage was given in the DoD
briefing on Monday 7 April 59 , and marks the end
of the intensive air campaign, relatively low
weapons usage taking place for the final 12 days.
What we are seeing, therefore, is an air campaign
with four main elements: firstly counter-regime
and WMD targets, which would have been classed
as ‘strategic’ targets during Operation DESERT
STORM; then counter-air operations; shaping
operations; and finally direct and indirect support
to the Land Component Commander. This, however,
was not a sequential campaign, offensive air
power being employed against all of these objectives
with differing emphasis at differing stages of
the campaign. The only really sequential elements
were the initial attacks on the Baghdad Super MEZ